Second Ave. Sagas

Category: Service Cuts

  • On MTA protests, some get it and some do not

    Public Advocate Bill de Blasio calls upon the MTA to rehire its station agents during a rally last week. As a City Councilman, de Blasio did not support revenue-generating plans such as congestion pricing. (Photo via flickr user Public Advocate Bill de Blasio)

    Not a day went by at the end of last week when the MTA did not find itself subjected to some sort of protest. First, the TWU and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio spoke out against station agent cuts. Then, Senator Chuck Schumer and labor leaders urged Congress to pass a $2 billion emergency transit operating aid relief bill. Finally, students at public schools throughout the city walked out on classes Friday to call upon city leaders to fund Student MetroCards. As the week ended, it became instantly clear who understand what was happening and who did not. The outcome is perhaps a bit surprising.

    On the surface, the de Blasio-lead protest, pictured above, seemed genuine, but I believe his was the least effective and most indicative of political grandstanding. While ignoring the seeming reality of the MTA’s precarious fiscal position, de Blasio twisted the MTA’s economic reports to meet his political ends and issued statements that seemed to have little basis in fact.

    “We cannot cut corners when it comes to straphangers’ safety,” de Blasio said. “New Yorkers who depend on station agents for security and essential services deserve a chance to have their voices heard. The MTA’s new public hearings will only work if they listen to New Yorkers and commit to incorporating their feedback before final decisions get made.”

    His office’s press release touting the rally made sure to note that the MTA claims lost revenue due to fare-beating grew from $7 million to $20 million last year. Why? Because the MTA, he says, eliminated over 200 station agents. The Public Advocate fails to note that the MTA’s accounting methods changed as well. Perhaps the increase in fare-jumping — still a de minimis loss — was related to the axing of the agents, and perhaps, it was not. To draw that conclusion is unwarranted.

    What de Blasio did not mention at his rally last week was his record on measures that would have provided the MTA with enough money to halt potential service cuts. As a City Council representative, de Blasio voted against congestion pricing because he feared it did not allow for enough additional transit options for his Brooklyn-based constituents. Now, we get service cuts and fewer station agents. Seems like a terrible trade-off to me.

    Luckily, though, de Blasio wasn’t the only one raising a stink last week. A group of teenagers called upon the city to fund the Student MetroCard program. The kids left school, hopped on the subway and marched from City Hall to the MTA’s 370 Jay St. building to protest cuts to the free travel program, and as they did so, they targeted the politicians and not the MTA.

    The politicians responded with words of support, but as City Council members and even Pedro Espada professed their desires to see student travel remain free, little progress has been made to shore up the program’s finances. Students, though, recognize that talking to politicians and not the MTA is the proper route. After all, the politicians are the ones who have stopped paying for this program, and the MTA isn’t a school bus operator. New York State and its municipalities foot the bill for student travel elsewhere; they should be doing the same in the city.

    Finally, Senator Schumer and a group of transit labor leaders rallied in support of a federal measure that would deliver $2 billion nationwide to troubled transit agencies. The money probably won’t come from Washington until well after the MTA implements its service cuts, but as states dither on implementing tough funding schemes for their urban areas’ economic drivers, Washington may have to pick up the slack, albeit temporarily. As with the students, Schumer understands what needs to be done. He isn’t always the most vocal leader on transit matters, but if the money needs to come — if the pork has to flow — the state’s senior Senator has a way of delivering.

    Yet, we shouldn’t have to rely on Schumer’s logrolling measures. We shouldn’t have to sit through Bill de Blasio’s public hypocrisy. We shouldn’t see this city’s students speaking out as lone voices of reason lost amidst bitter political debates. In two weeks, subway service will slow down. In two months, student rides may not be free. Neither of these outcomes are predestined, but as long as the city and state politicians we entrust to govern fail to do so, the millions of us who rely on transit will have to pay.

  • MTA ‘optimistic’ Student MetroCards will be saved

    I have such mixed thoughts about the future of the Student MetroCard program. On the one hand, students in New York City should enjoy free rides to and from their public schools as every other public school student in the country does. On the other hand, the city and state — and decidedly not the MTA — should be picking up the tab for this benefit. On other other, other hand, I have to wonder why Albany can get so up in arms when Student MetroCards are threatened but can’t be bothered to lift a finger when buses and subway routes are eliminated.

    Today, the news is guardedly optimistic for the future of the Student MetroCards as politicians and MTA officials believe something will happen to save the free rides for students. Even as New York State prepares to shut down its services because warring factions in Albany can’t come to a budget agreement, legislatures will step in to save student fares. Time, though, is of the essence as the MTA Board plans to vote in less than two weeks on its proposal to eliminate the free rides.

    “The sentiment of almost everybody in our conference is that the money has to be put in there,” Dov Hikind, a Brooklyn assembly rep, said to The Wall Street Journal. While other state officials echoed Hikind’s line of thought, no one could say from where the money will flow. In March, Pedro Espada proposed bridge tolls to fund student rides, but that plan hasn’t garnered much attention since then.

    Meanwhile, a quote from Richard Brodsky in The Journal struck me as appropriate too. “When the MTA said that the number was $210 million,” he said, “that was clearly not the case. When I announced that they could do this for nothing, that was clearly not the case.” I’m glad to see Brodsky’s admitting that student travel comes at a cost to the MTA, and I’m relieved to see Brodsky’s recognizing that the MTA’s $214 million figure appears to rely on what they would draw in as revenue if they charged students full fare. The actual cost of administering the student travel program and allowing students to ride for free remains to be seen.

    At 347 Madison, the MTA, in the words of spokesman Jeremy Soffin, remains “optimistic” that Albany will come through. Yet, I embrace this rescue plan with some hesitation. What about we the fare-paying public? Don’t we deserve a proper funding package as well?

    When the MTA implements its service cuts on June 28, over 2 million straphangers and countless more bus riders will find their commutes and travel around the city drastically altered. Trains will be slower in arriving and more crowded. Some trains won’t run at all; others will see new service patterns; and everyone will pay the price. The people suffering are the workers in New York who drive the city’s economy. Just as the city’s students deserve their free rides, so too do the rest of us warrant subway service that meets demands regardless of the price tag.

    If Albany is willing to sacrifice something for students — bridge tolls, congestion fees, whatever it might be — it should be willing to up the ante for the rest of us who need the subways to lead productive lives. Our collective trips to work and to play are just as important as a high schooler’s trip to school, if not more so. Where’s our funding package?

  • A proposal to fix the station agents

    This station kiosk at the local BMT stop at Prince St. closed on May 13. (Photo via flickr user Tim Faracy of Bklyn)

    Taxpayers have to shell out $40,000 per day as long as the MTA is not allowed to dismiss its station agents. At least, that’s what Jay Walder, MTA CEO and Chairman, estimated the costs were yesterday morning at an emergency meeting of the MTA Board held to address recent legal setbacks as the MTA looks to dismiss station agents and shutter kiosks throughout the system.

    The saga of the station agents is one oft examined here at Second Ave. Sagas. Recently, the news has been coming fast and furious. On Friday afternoon, after issuing a temporary injunction against the station agent dismissals last month, a Manhattan Supreme Court judge ruled that the MTA could not shutter station kiosks without holding public hearings. Even though the authority had held these hearings a little more than a year ago on the same closure plans, because Albany averted the layoffs through a funding package and because the MTA had rescinded the cuts last year, the MTA had to host new hearings because “concerns of the citizenry” could have shifted in time.

    On Tuesday afternoon, the same judge amended her order to require the MTA to reopen booths it had closed earlier this year. This order has been stayed pending an appeal. Meanwhile, the MTA Board voted unanimously to host four hearings — one per borough impacted by the booth closures — in mid-July before voting to cut station agents and close kiosks after that. It is, as Walder said today, a foregone conclusion, and the MTA is holding these hearings simply to comply with the court’s order.

    “I wish I could tell you that that situation changed,” Walder said. “There’s no indication today, as we stand here or sit here today that the situation, the financial situation is any better than it was when we took this action months ago.”

    As expected, the response from the TWU was one of protest. Union officials and Public Advocate Bill DeBlasio are going to host a press conference urging the MTA to hire back, albeit temporarily, the laid-off station agents (at a cost to the taxpayers), and the union continues to push its safety-first platform. “Digital signage and cameras can’t come to the aid of passengers, and can’t offer that immediate link to police and fire that our station agents provide,” TWU Local 100 president John Samuelsen said.

    And that’s where we come in. For years, I’ve doubted the efficacy of the station agents. While they may act as a psychological security blanket for straphangers and a limited deterrent for some criminals, they’re not allowed to assist a victim in the midst of a crime and have little effect on those determined to do something bad. Maybe the solution lies in fixing the agents’ roles.

    Let’s take a look at a station diagram. Below is a map of the 28th St. stop at on the 7th Ave. IRT.

    This station today features just one agent and remaining station booth on the uptown platform in between the two staircases at 28th St. The booth and agent are in the fare-control area and thus have a limited view of the platform. Those people waiting on the platform between 28th and 27th Sts. aren’t visible to the station agent, and those waiting at the southern end of the station are a block and a half away. By sitting behind the turnstiles inside a booth, the agent is useless for anyone under duress at the far reaches of the platform, and this reality is acted out at stations around the system.

    To solve this problem while actually increasing safety, the MTA and TWU should work together to change the job. Station agents should be positioned anywhere throughout the station. They should be available to help those at the fare-control area, but they should also patrol the platforms as a set of eyes. They aren’t police officers and don’t have law enforcement powers, but the agents could be used as a community watch for the subways. That has to be a stronger deterrent than the mostly useless agents out in force today.

    The MTA, though, can’t enact this plan without more money, and the TWU has spent its efforts defending jobs instead of offering up better suggestions. We the taxpaying and subway-riding public instead will get a labor fight, more layoffs and the bill for what amounts to a legal technicality under the station agents can be eliminated through the proper procedures in six-to-eight weeks. It hardly seems worth it.

  • In Bushwick, sugar-coating a service cut

    When residents who live along the M line from Bushwick to Middle Village wake up on June 27, they will find their commutes drastically altered. The M will no longer travel down Nassau St. and into Southern Brooklyn. Instead, with a new orange bullet denoting a Sixth Ave. trunk route, the M will take the Chrystie St. Cut to Broadway/Lafayette and make local stops up Sixth Ave. to Forest Hills. It is a service cut with a purpose.

    For thousands of commuters, this new service pattern will be a step up. Having a one-seat ride from Bushwick to Midtown while bypassing the need to switch to the crowded F train is a service improvement the MTA should have implemented years ago, and today, Metro explores how residents in the norther parts of Brooklyn are looking forward to the new service patterns.

    “My roommate and I were thrilled when we found out,” Adam Thompson, whose nearest stop is at Central Ave. on the M, said to Carly Baldwin. “I hang out in the West Village a lot and this will be the first time I don’t need to take two trains to get there. I really think we’re the only community not getting screwed by the service changes.”

    If only life in the post-service cuts era were as rosy as Thompson makes it out to be. It’s certainly true that Thompson’s weekday rides to the West Village will be vastly improved, but that’s about it. After 11 p.m. on weeknights and at all times during the weekend, Thompson will still be stuck with a three-train ride to the West Village. Futhermore, as the MTA explains, weekend headway increases and load guideline revisions means that trains will arrive less frequently and will be more crowded. A service cut is a service cut is a service cut.

    At some point in the future, when the real estate tax revenues rebound, the MTA’s fiscal outlook will turn from red to black, and the agency may begin to explore restoring lost service. When it does, the M should still service Midtown via the Chrystie St. Cut, but until then, we can’t gloss over the reality that, on June 27, subway service will be worse for everyone in New York City. The new service patterns may sound alluring, but I’d prefer service to meet demand and not these cuts.

  • Judge orders shuttered booths reopened

    MTA Board to meet to address station booth closure plans

    Updated (5:50 p.m.): Four days after ruling that the MTA couldnot shutter station booths because the authority did not follow proper procedure, the same Manhattan judge has ordered the MTA to reopen token booths and station kiosks that were closed last month as part of the MTA’s budget crisis. Despite holding mandated hearings in early 2009 on the same closure plans, Judge Saliann Scarpulla has ordered the MTA to hold hearings this year because concerns over the closures may have changed. The new ruling is a blow to the MTA, and the authority says it will appeal the order tomorrow morning.

    The agency released a statement this afternoon:

    The MTA continues to disagree with the court’s ruling that additional public hearings are required before the station booths and kiosks can be closed, and that the kiosks closed in May need to be re-opened. These closures were necessitated by the MTA’s dire financial situation, and the need for the savings they generate remains.

    We believe the prior public hearings fully conformed with the legal requirements and will be appealing the judge’s order as soon as it is entered. The appeal triggers an automatic stay of the lower court’s order, and the MTA therefore should not be required to re-open the recently-closed kiosks at this time.

    At the same time as the MTA pursues the appeal, we will be proceeding on a parallel track with the public hearing process. With that in mind, an MTA Board meeting is scheduled for tomorrow at which the Board will be asked to authorize the public hearing process to move this vital cost-saving initiative forward.

    Concurrent with this appeal, the MTA Board in a special session at 9:30 a.m. tomorrowwill meet to discuss the future of the station agents under fire. Per a note from MTA CEO and Chair Jay Walder, the board will “address the litigation strategy” and will vote to start the public hearing process on the booth/kiosk reduction plans.

    Friday’s ruling and today’s order both hinge on technical procedural issues, and the MTA can overcome the findings simply by holding another round of costly and time-consuming hearings. In the meantime, the agency will pay out at least $100,000 per day in taxpayer money until the station booths are closed for good in a few months. The TWU may have won this round of lawsuits, but I have to wonder who comes out ahead.

  • Judge orders MTA to keep station booths open

    MTA will appeal ruling but begin public hearing process as well

    Token Booth

    The legal dispute over the MTA’s desires to close token booths will continue. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

    A New York State Supreme Court judge in Manhattan has ordered the MTA to keep station booths open and staffed until the Authority can hold public hearings on the closures. This decision — a legal blow to the MTA — came nearly a month to the day after another judge issued a temporary restraining order that kept station booths open. The authority, which says it will both appear and follow the ruling, will now have to hold public hearings on the station booth closures before proceeding with the dismissal of 222 workers and the shuttering of over 100 booths.

    The MTA first proposed closing the station booths in 2009 when a budget shortfall emerged. At the time, the authority held the hearings legally required under New York Public Authorities Law § 1205(5). When Albany approved the payroll tax package that guaranteed funding for the MTA, the authority decided to eliminate positions and close the booths through attrition rather than layoffs. Yet, when an $800 million deficit emerged in 2010, the authority announced its decision to implement layoffs but this time without a public hearing.

    In its legal argument, the Transport Workers Union Local 100 challenged the decision to eschew hearings. The TWU alleged a violation of the Public Authorities Law that requires the MTA to hold a hearing when it is contemplating “any complete or partial closing of a passenger station…or any means of public access to such facility.” The judge agreed with the TWU that these closures proposed for 2010 warranted a new hearing even though they were materially identical to those put forward last year.

    Taking an expansive view of the MTA’s requirements under the Public Authorities Law, Judge Saliann Scarpulla ordered the MTA to maintain the booths until hearings could be held. “As of May 2009, [the MTA] had informed the public that the earlier plan for mass subway token booth and customer assistant kiosk changes was not going to be implemented,” she wrote. “Once the respondents decided, almost a year later, to reimplement that plan, new hearings were required.”

    In a sense, though, Judge Scarpulla’s order hinges almost exclusively on this technicality. Because the MTA is cutting station agents through firings after saying it would so through attrition 12 months ago, it must hold another hearing. After all, as the TWU alleged, the “concerns of the citizenry” could have shifted in time.

    In a separate part of the opinion, however, Judge Scarpulla refuses to side with the TWU as it attempts to question the overall safety impact of the station agent dismissals. The TWU had wanted a judge to find that the booth closures would violate the MTA’s “statutory obligation to promote the safety and convenience of the public.” Since the MTA has traditionally been granted wide latitude in its operations, the final decision to close the booths is not, said the judge, “subject to judicial review.”

    So where then does this decision leave the MTA? First, the authority does not have to rehire the 250 station agents who were fired in early May. As long as the authority maintains staffing levels necessary to keep the booths open, it can do what it pleases with its employees. Second, the MTA can go ahead with dismissals and closures after it follows the legally mandated procedures as set forth in the Public Authorities Law. In other words, after going through another public comment and hearing process, the Board can still vote to close the stations and still vote to fire the workers.

    This ruling, then, is nothing more than a procedural and fiscal thorn in the MTA’s side, and it will probably cost $100,000 a day plus the expenses for the public hearings for the MTA to comply with it.

    In response, the MTA expressed is displeasure over the ruling and vowed to both appeal and start the lengthy public hearing process. “The MTA is disappointed in today’s ruling that we cannot proceed with slated subway booth and kiosk closures without repeating the public hearing process. These closures were necessitated by the MTA’s dire financial situation, and the need for the savings they generate remains,” the authority said in a statement this afternoon. “While we disagree with the ruling and intend to appeal, we will be proceeding on a parallel track with the public hearing process. With that in mind, an MTA Board meeting will be scheduled for next week at which the Board will be asked to authorize the public hearing process to move this vital cost-saving initiative forward.”

    I am still awaiting comment from the TWU.

    After the jump, a copy of the court’s decision is embedded. (more…)

  • Changing the service, changing the signs

    A draft of a proposed sign that the MTA will post in buses starting early this month. (Courtesy of the MTA)

    With June upon us, the countdown to the service cuts has begun. Although some U.S. Senators are trying to secure $2 billion in aid for cash-starved transit systems, the MTA knows that money is not likely to come soon, and the authority has to move ahead with its cuts.

    Rarely in New York City history has the MTA implemented service changes as immediate and sweeping as though on tap for the end of June, and while we explored the changes to the subway map on Friday, the entire bus and subway systems must be reconfigured for the new service patterns. At its board meeting last week, the MTA unveiled its Service Reduction Implementation Plan (PDF). The changes are extensive.

    As the W and V meet their deaths, as the Q replaces the W north of 57th St., and as the M takes over the V’s Sixth Ave. route to Forest Hills, the MTA must begin to pepper stations with signs such as the one shown at right. These signs will begin to appear in fare-control areas at all impacted stations by mid-June. Transit will also blanket stations with audio announcements and distribute pamphlets with the new route information. Despite this coverage, confused straphangers will still blame the MTA when the M mysteriously arrives at 63rd Drive in Rego Park on June 29.

    At over 150 stations currently served by the G, M, N, Q, V and W trains, the MTA will have to change it signage. Nearly 3000 graphics explaining service patterns will be stickered over or completely rewritten. Some of these edits will be made early this month before the service changes go into effect, and for a few weeks, the system will appear to be in a state of flux as trains arrive where the signs say they shouldn’t and terminate ostensibly too early.

    The rolling stock too presents a challenge. Along the BMT Broadway, Sixth Ave. and Queens Boulevard lines, the newest train cars will have to be reprogrammed, and the automated announcements will be updated. The FIND displays in the R160s will be changed automatically on June 27, but for the R143s, the strip maps will be edited with stickers. Conductors too will handed a new script. For what it’s worth, the M up Sixth Ave. will have the new R160 cars. Customers along those stops will have to adjust to shorter trains.

    For buses, the changes too will lead to visible alterations. The MTA is eliminating 21 local and 12 express buses with weekend service eliminated on 12 local and two additional express bus routes. Routes will be changed, and service frequency will be scaled back for 39 other routes.

    To inform customers of these changes, signs such as that atop this post will adorn buses and audio announcements will be played on endangered routes. The map will change, and new timetables will be published in late June. It is an ambitious rollout plan, to say the least, and for the next 27 days, Transit employees will have their hands full.

    * * *
    An early-morning TV appearance

    On a semi-related note, I’ll be appearing this morning on FOX 5’s Good Day, New York to talk about the upcoming service cuts. The segment will air live at at 8:15 a.m., and the questions will involve the Public Transportation Preservation Act of 2010 and whether or not Congress will be able to act in time to prevent the MTA from implementing these cuts. If you’re up early, be sure to check it out.

  • LIRR service cuts now in place

    With little fanfare, the MTA implemented the first of this spring’s service cuts. Yesterday morning, new timetables for the Long Island Rail Road went into effect, and although the cuts are seemingly insubstantial, the commuter rail line just became a little less convenient for its riders. Generally, the cuts consist of the elimination of some overnight trains and peak trips, and the LIRR said that most riders will see waits increase by 10 minutes or less. Still, with these cuts into place, people will find it more burdensome to commute via rail. Trains will be more crowded and now run less frequently. If the purpose of mass transit is to provide convenient and cost-effective replacements for auto trips, cuts always run counter to that goal.

  • Do the MTA cuts leave straphangers lost in bad weather?

    When a severe rain storm knocked out the subway system in August 2007, New York City Transit spend considerable resources investigation ways to better prepare the subways for weather-related emergencies. Although the raised storm grates should protect the system from massive floods, the MTA still needs to communicate with its passengers, and to that end, an internal report suggested doubling the number of full-time staffers handling weather issues from 32 to 64. Now, those folks are on the chopping block, and amNew York wonders if this will leave straphangers without the necessary notifications in the event of weather-related delays.

    Of course, the usual suspects bemoan the cuts. “I think it’s a terrible mistake,” Gene Russianoff said. “They are as integral to the system as the trains and electric power.” But as I think about it, I can’t help but wonder why the MTA needs 32, let alone 64, full-time staffers whose sole responsibilities include announcing weather-related delays that simply do not crop up that frequently. Maybe it snows a handful of times over the winter; maybe one rain storm causes some minor delays. The August 2007 storm was an anomaly, and the reaction to it shouldn’t unnecessarily handcuff a fiscally-strapped agency.

  • Walder, Samuelsen square off with dismissals on the way

    As the temporary restraining order preventing the MTA from firing 475 station agents remained in place throughout the weekend, the relationship between the authority and the TWU grew icier. Transit announced layoffs in spite of the injunction, and MTA Chair and CEO Jay Walder has engaged in a war of words with TWU President John Samuelsen over what Walder believes to be antiquated work rules hampering the authority.

    The first development arrived on Saturday morning when Transit announced that 250 station agents would be let go this week while the remaining 225 would be retained until, as the agency anticipates, the temporary injunction is lifted. Since the restraining order focused only on keeping the booths open, the authority decided it could do so with a skeletal staff.

    “A temporary restraining order issued by a court Wednesday night put the MTA’s closure of the 42 subway booths on hold for now,” Transit said in a statement on Saturday. “In light of the order, the MTA is refraining from laying off the employees needed to staff those booths while the litigation proceeds. More than 250 of the station agents, however, are not required to keep those subway booths open, and those layoffs are now scheduled for next week to ensure that we achieve the maximum savings possible in light of the MTA’s budget shortfall.”

    According to the Wall Street Journal, those to be fired are the burgundy vest-wearing station agents who roam fare-control areas and help customers with directions and problems that may arise. Union officials have long maintained that station agents are an integral part of the system’s security, but the jury is decidedly out on that claim.

    The bigger labor-related headlines this weekend, though, concerned the clash between Samuelsen and Walder. Pete Donohue has the story:

    Rules embedded in labor contracts are hampering the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s efforts to increase efficiency – and save money, Walder told the Daily News. “That has to change,” Walder said. “It might mean some of our bus drivers aren’t as good at playing pool as they are now, but we might have to bear that cost.”

    Some bus depots have pool tables in crew rooms for drivers to use on their so-called swing shift, a period of time when drivers receive half-pay but aren’t behind the wheel. A typical bus driver’s schedule can span 12 hours: driving a route for four hours during the morning rush and another four hours in the evening rush, the peak travel periods when service is most needed. During the middle four hours – say, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. – drivers don’t have any work-related duties but are still on the clock.

    Transport Workers Union Local 100 President John Samuelsen bristled at Walder’s comments. “Our bus operators are away from their families 13, 14 hours a day and are compensated for it,” Samuelsen said.

    Donohue details have competing union contracts prevent the MTA from assigning drivers to shifts in other boroughs after rush hour, and the authority is instead left with idle workers. This work rule, though, seems to make some sense. The authority can’t expect to ask its drivers to commute to and from work twice a day just to avoid a few hours of downtime. The flexibility should come in reassigning drivers.

    Where Walder has a real gripe though is here, writes Donohue: “He also is miffed that when a driver who is behind the wheel eight hours a day calls in sick, he gets paid for the full 12-hour ‘run,’ including the swing span.” The sick day provisions have come under fire.

    I don’t expect the unions to budge right now. They’re being assailed on all sides as the MTA looks to cut its number of employees and scale back compensation practices. Walder, though, is taking this fight to the media. “We should have a well-paid and well-compensated workforce, ” he said to the Daily News. “but the quid pro quo of that is we should have a productive workforce. I think we have a series of work rules and practices that have developed over many years that are all about how people effectively get paid for not working. I think that’s really where the shame of the system is.”